On Cursed Art, Nostalgia and the cult of Chuck Wendig: a conversation with Max Booth III

Max Booth III is the hottest commodity in indie horror literature. He’s a publisher, an editor, a podcaster and the best author you (probably) never read. His werewolf novel Carnivorous Lunar Activities and his bathroom novella We Need To Do Something turned a lot of heads in the last year and you’ll be glad to learn he finally has a book coming that doesn’t have the character confined in a ridiculously tight space for two hundred pages.

Touch The Night is coming out next Tuesday (from Cemetary Dance of all places), so we had a chat about its release and many, many other things. Because on top of everything he does, Max is also a good friend of the site.

Ben: Max, we have too many books to discuss. Your novella We Need To Do Something has been the talk of the town and you have Touch the Night coming from Cemetary Dance next week. Which one do you want to discuss first?

Max: I know you just finished the bathroom novella, so maybe it makes sense to get that fucking thing out of the way.

Ben: It's a great book, but it's the epitome of cursed art. Reading about four people caught in a cramped bathroom for days makes you want to pull your eyeballs off and never read again. Kind of in a Jack Ketchum way. Are you cool with that?

Max: I’m curious by what you mean exactly when you say “cursed art”. The term sounds cool, but I’m not sure what it means outside of movies that are actually considered CURSED (like the Twilight Zone movie).

Ben: What makes reading more rewarding than watching a movie is the intimate relationship you develop with characters. Cursed art has characters you don't really want to know. What happens in your novella is so tragic and BELIEVABLE it makes you want to forget it can happen. That's what I mean by cursed art. It's emotionally potent, but it makes you feel weird.

You don't think We Need To Do Something is cursed?

Max: I hadn't thought of it as cursed until you mentioned it. Your definition definitely fits. I guess that also perfectly describes the 2003 adaptation of Cat in the Hat. Thinking about it more, it might be the ultimate example of cursed art.

Ben: I don't know what Cat in the Hat is.

Max: When thinking of a good example, I first googled Daddy Day Care, then remembered the abysmal creation that is Cat in the Hat. Then I discovered both films came out in 2003. What a fucking terrible year for humanity.

It's very similar to my bathroom novella, actually. Except not really. Mike Myers plays the titular Cat, but he looks like what a furry might have nightmares about.

Ben: Oh shit, I've seen that with my nephew and niece. They cried after 30 minutes and begged me to turn it off. Why would anybody want to watch that?

Max: Dude, I've seen that movie no less than 1,000 times. Same thing: nephew and nieces, except they fucking love it.

Do you guys have tornados up in Canada? Have you had many experiences with them? You mentioned the novella was very believable so I wonder if any of it touched home with you in that aspect.

Ben: They're extremely rare around these part. I've heard of two or three tornadoes around the area in my lifetime. We get water tornadoes, though. They don't do shit, but are equally scary. The book did hit a chord with me, though. It's more about being caught in a cramped space with people you should technically love, but don't. It's my own definition of hell.

Max: I hadn't thought about it until now, but of course it's obvious in retrospect. The being-cramped-with-people-you-maybe-kinda-hate" theme, considering I spent so much of my teenage years living in a tiny hotel room with my parents.

Ben: Oh fuck. I remember that from the hotel book. Hadn't linked the two. This is also literally hell. Or at least purgatory. That's why I was so interested in seeing the world outside the bathroom.

Max: The whole idea for this bathroom book originated because we DID have a tornado warning. We don't get them too often, either, so yeah, better believe when they do pass through here, it's a fucking EVENT, right? Lots of places in Texas are more tornado prone than where we live, but it's not totally unheard of, you know?

We had this one pass us late at night, phones going nuts with emergency alerts, so we went into the bathroom connected to our bedroom and laid out some blankets, played some board games, hung out with our dogs. I remember Lori telling me I was an idiot for leaving halfway through to brew a pot of coffee. Maybe I was? But I can also maybe imagine Robert (the father figure in the novella) leaving the bathroom to refill on booze, if he'd been able to actually leave the bathroom, of course. Thankfully, in our case, a tree didn't come fuckin' crashing through the roof and essentially caving us inside.

Ben: Robert was really what held the novella together, I thought. He was a believable and terrifying fuck up. The way you nailed addiction was uncomfortably real. Did he come first when you were planning the book in your head or did he just show up?

Max: So, the idea formed, for the most part, while we were waiting out that initial tornado warning. I kept thinking, "What if we got trapped in here? What if nobody ever came to save us? How would we survive?" Shit like that. Then, almost immediately, I thought, "What if all of this happened, but I was also an alcoholic?" And pretty much everything clicked into place after that realization. The way an addict would unravel during such a situation. I also maybe imagined Nicolas Cage as the character of Robert. I think he can freak out better than anyone. I also dislike the way people shrug him off as some kinda meme. He's a really good actor!

Ben: He is really good. But also really cursed. Vampire's Kiss is one of the most cursed films I've ever watched. I think We Need To Do Something will be more remembered that you'd like. That people will talk to you about it for years. How would you like it to be remembered?

Max: I would like to be known as one of the first horror authors to tackle deepfakes in a cool way. I think maybe I am on the ground floor there, right? As far as using them in fiction, at least.

Ben: I mean the book. Not you.

Max: Okay, reword my answer to say "I would like it to be known as one of the first horror books to tackle deepfakes in a cool way" and you still get the same answer.

Ben: Wait, who's deepfaked in the book?

Max: The entire subplot with what happens to Amy, what sets everything off. The boy who's obsessed with her.(Editor’s note: I have no fucking clue what that means)

Do you think writers give a lot of thought in how they want a book to be remembered? I hadn't given it much thought until you even asked.

Ben: Man, I think too many writers give too much thought to how they want to be remembered. It's more important to them than the actual writing. You're one of the only people I know who does it for the right reasons and I've been in this business for what? Ten years?

Max: I think maybe it's silly to worry about how you're going to be remembered. Because...in the end, none of us are going to be remembered. It's insane to believe anything we do actually matters, that we're anything more than a simple blip on the radar of time. One blink and we're gone forever. I just know that I like to write and make cool shit and it beats most other methods people utilize to pass the time between birth and death.

Ben: It's the writing advice Chuck Klosterman said once to an auditorium full of people: if you write a book, make sure you like it. Because in 50 years, no one will remember it but you.

Max: I will add on to this advice: If you write a book, make sure you're okay with talking about it a lot long after you finish it. I'm still getting asked werewolf questions in interviews because of Carnivorous Lunar Activities. It's a good thing I like werewolves.

Ben: I think you're going to talk about dysfunctional families trapped in bathrooms for a long time too. Are you cool with that?

Max: I don't mind. I've had a lot of experience with them.

Ben: Speaking of dysfunctional families, the ones featured in your other novel Touch The Night are a lot more conventional and sympathetic. It's been promoted at Stranger Things meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I thought it wasn't really like Stranger Things at all. It reminded me how shitty it was being a kid in a small town. Did you feel nostalgic writing it?

Max: I really did, yeah. The inciting incident with the kids sneaking out and fucking around doing petty property damage, only to be interrupted by the police, that's a scene straight from my memory. It takes place in a small town in Indiana called Percy, which is basically an alter ego of my own hometown of Lake Station, Indiana. Same basic layout. Same kinda people. The two main kids in this book do things that I did at the same age. Going around making Jackass-esque videos. Making prank phone calls using Internet soundboards. Elaborate shoplifting schemes. Shit like that.

Also, if you're curious where the name Percy came from, it was as stupid as needing a town name and spotting a Benjamin Percy book nearby. "Yeah, that'll do," I thought. Haha.

Ben: There was a freedom to childhood that the book translates pretty well. It's not just crammed full of nostalgia references and it does carry the message that isolated towns are rather shitty places for kids and that cops are assholes. You're big on that.

Max: From your review, it sounded like you had a similar upbringing, right?

Ben: Oh yeah, same but different. Not a lot to do and lots of weird adults with substance habits around.

Max: Opiate abuse was and still is very present in Indiana. The Midwest is a miserable place to live.

A memory that came to me tonight, thinking about my hometown. I was spending the night with my best friend, we were at his grandpa's house, and he took us to the grocery store late late at night. These older kids kept fucking with us. I talked some major shit to them. They walked away. Later, we left the store and got in my grandpa's car. The kids drove up, one of them got out and whipped a goddamn brick at the passenger window and bashed it open, then drove away. My friend's grandpa, high off his ass on pills, chased them around town, lost track of them, then eventually decided a random car parked on the street HAD to be the one who threw a brick at us, so he got out and carved "COCKSUCKER" on the hood with his keys.

Ben: Brings back memories. Why do you think kids in places like that feel the need to behave so recklessly? I got urges to do shit like that today still.

Max: Man, I don’t know. Is it a small-town thing? The feeling of safety that tempts us to destroy boundaries? I grew up during Jackass, too, and most of our time was spent pretty much mimicking the show’s aesthetic. Going around town with my shitty little camcorder filming ourselves skateboarding off stupid things or pulling pranks on unsuspecting citizens. One thing we loved to do was get into public trash cans and roll down hills. That always made for a good video.

Ben: How did you get the idea of having the kids kidnapped, then?

Max: When I was a kid, maybe 10 or 11, I was spending the night at my best friend's house. We snuck out in the middle of the night to fuck around and break shit. Egging houses. Ripping real estate signs from yards. Breaking windows with rocks. Stupid asshole kid shit. On the way back to his house, a cop car pulled up behind us. Was probably following us for a while but didn't turn on the sirens until we were right in front of my friend's house. Two guys stepped out of the car and immediately started in on the, "What are you faggots doing out at this time of night?" Typical cop talk. They asked our names. My friend lied and said he was my brother and gave my address, which was clear across town. I went along with it. They questioned us further about what we thought we were doing out after midnight. We smarted off to them. They handcuffed us and slammed our heads against the hoods of their car as they patted us down and continued to scream various homophobic slurs at us. Then my friend's mom woke up and stepped out of the house and things got even more awkward.

So...that's pretty much identical to how Touch The Night begins, although obviously I added more to the book to give it an extra touch of suspense. Nothing else really happened that night. We were taken to the station or anything. They called my parents and made them come get me and that was that. I always wanted to write about that specific memory, and I did, but it seemed more exciting to have the cops actually arrest the kids, but something clicked in my head that said, "Nah, dude, these cops need to take them somewhere else. A place where nobody's ever going to find them." And one idea after another led from this thought process, and eventually a novel was born.

Ben: I hear you. There's a sense of familiarity to it. It's the same reason why I watch True Detective once a year: it's now what happens that matters, it's how it happens.

Max: Pretty similar to any of those monster-of-the-week or detective shows. X-Files. Supernatural. Justified. We go in with a certain expectation.

Ben: Exactly, you either fulfill or subvert expectations. Or you create them if it's your first time writing. Speaking of which, you're on a roll. You've had work published by Fangoria and Cemetary Dance within a year and your writing have gotten increasingly better. You're where plenty of writers want to be. Do you feel pressure when you're writing now?

Max: It's very weird to think about that I've now had books released from Fangoria and Cemetery Dance so close together. Obviously if I stepped out of my own head for a minute and wondered what I would have thought about all of this five years ago, I would be pissing my pants with excitement, and it would be well-deserved, because holy shit, Cemetery Dance? That never seemed possible when I first started embracing the writing scene. It never even crossed my mind that they would publish one of my books. The main "white whale" with them was possibly one day getting a short story published in their magazine.

I feel an immense pressure right now as I work on a new book. Part of that has to do with the fact that earlier this year I got myself a manager, and up until then I've never had any sort of representation. This specific book is the one we're going to work together on and attempt to sway a literary agent with, which is something I've never had the best luck on. Also, the idea behind this specific book has been something I've always wanted to write but it's always intimidated me to even attempt. Very big weird paranoid historical shaggy dog thing that I maybe will never be equipped to handle, but fuck it. The goal, at this point, is to land this book with one of the bigger publishing houses.

So the pressure feels pretty immense with that thought brewing in the back of my head, especially as this work-in-progress gets weirder and weirder the deeper I go.

Ben: Man, I've been doing this reviewing thing for 10 years now and you might be the only author (along perhaps with Jennifer Hillier) I've come across who has steadily kept an upward trajectory and I find that fascinating. I've seen a lot of shooting stars get big contacts and flame out because of reason that don't have anything to do with writing. Success mostly fuck with their perception of themselves and makes them drifts from the reasons why they were writing in the first place. This obviously hasn't been the case with you. How did you manage to keep your head down and focus on what matters?

Max: Obviously very strange to think about any semblance of a career I might have from...outside my body like this. But I guess maybe, if I had to pinpoint something that's been a little different with me, is I haven't always had the best luck with publishers (See: The DarkFuse Fiasco of 2016). Being treated badly can help deflate any possible egos. Also, I spend way more time working on publishing stuff with Perpetual Motion Machine and Dark Moon Digest than I do actually writing, so it seems likely I am just...very distracted by everything going on with PMMP (plus our two podcasts and the various freelance non-fiction I do) that I simply don't have time to freak out about any of that silly shit?

Ben: Correct me if I'm wrong, but does the day job help too? From experience, writing attract profoundly volatile people. It's something I've discussed with Nick Mamatas and he made a very good point: writing attacts weirdos because there's no rules for success. Seems like your life is very structured, though. Being a family man and whatnot.

Max: I don't know if it helps at this point. Maybe it used to. For those reading this conversation who do not know, I work the night shift at a hotel. It attracts lots of weird characters, without a doubt. I've been working there almost 8 years now. You would think it would offer a lot of free time for writing, and sure...sometimes I get those slow, event-free shifts, but also more often than not I am spending 8 hours stressing out about various things going wrong and/or getting screamed at by guests for things beyond my control. I choose to believe I would be less miserable if I were writing full-time, but who knows? I'm sure I would find other things to complain about if I managed to start making enough to quit the hotel.

I often suspect working the night shift for so many years (almost 9 now; 1 year overnight stocking at walmart, then almost 8 at this hotel) has done irreversible damage to my brain. I find it harder to concentrate on things and stay focused on one project. I am always tired. I'm sure studies exist that say pretty much something like, "You are fucked if you do this long enough." Humans aren't meant to stay up all night every night. It fucks with you in weird ways.

Ben: That's a good point you bring up. The great majority of people I meet in this business feel the need to foster an author persona. You obviously don't. I obviously can't. What do you think about how writers brand themelves on social media?

Max: I try my best not to think about brands. I am positive to an outsider I probably seem like I've adapted a certain persona or brand, and maybe that's true. I don't know what that would be. I know I'm more talkative online than I am in person, but I don't know if it's brand-related or more that I'm just comfortable typing and not comfortable talking aloud due to a speech impediment and spending most of my childhood living in a motel isolated from society.

Some brands are way more obvious with certain authors. Like, the elephant in the room here would be Chuck Wendig, right? He's clearly adapted this bizarre Twitter personality where he shouts nonsense baby languages, and people eat that shit up, which encourages him to continue until I have to physically smash my face into a wall. Lately he's been doing this thing where he posts a "Nightly Question", and it's incredibly clear that he does not actually care about what his followers say, he's just concerned about getting that sweet, sweet Twitter interaction to maintain his relevancy.

You see this kind of online brand very often, and I find it hard to stomach, and I hope like hell I never fall into that same trap. I was telling a friend the other day about people like Wendig, who spend almost all of their time on Twitter. I compared it to those people who live in houses with dozens of stray cats. All of that cat shit, it eventually builds up and it rewires the way your brain functions. I think Twitter will do the same thing to you. Or any social media platform, really.

Ben: Wendig is a fascinating example because it worked. He was literally nobody. He launched a website and a self-published collection and started acting like foul-mouthed Tony Robbins on meth and every desperate soul on social media ate it up. It literally made his career. He has a built-in audience, which made him somewhat of a sure bet. Sure, he had Stacia Decker in his corner but she had something more than his dreamy gaze to sell. There's something to learn from him. I was thinking more about the mystery writers who wear a fedora in their profile picture or the horror writers who wear a horror mask and have Facebook page with 96 followers that's named Bob Perkins - horror writer or something.

Max: Those goofballs with JOE BLOW - HORROR WRITER on their Facebook fan pages are very funny to me, but I don't think they're relevant enough to deeply discuss. However, I wonder what you would say if you walked through our house. We have a haunted village set up all year long. We have horror posters and statues and masks and spider webs and skeletons hanging up. I'm not posting pics of it online for "street cred" or anything. We have these kind of decorations because we both (Lori and I) fucking love the genre, and this sorta aesthetic makes us happy. It's fun to celebrate spookiness.

Ben: I know you love it and I think this earnest passion is at the source of you guys' success with PMMP and your literary success. You guys do it for the right reasons. Because if you do it for validation, writing and indie publishing doesn't offer you much of that.

Max: Wait, are you trying to tell me indie publishing won't make me rich? Fuuuuuuck.

Ben: Tell me, you're one of the longest standing indie lit publishers I know. What's your secret?

Max: I think I would be very embarrassed to throw in the towel with a company called Perpetual Motion Machine...doesn't it feel a little ironic? I forget what irony means. But there's something amusing about it. But, uh...I don't know if we have a secret, other than a bizarre stubbornness. We still enjoy doing the company, even if it leads to a lot of anxiety and depression. I don't know why we don't quit. I probably would have a long time ago if it was just myself working on it, so maybe the secret is to have a spouse as a publishing partner who helps keep you sane. In a way, this is "the thing" Lori and I do together. This is what we talk about every day.

Ben: Nice. I think that sums it up. Anything you want to add/discuss?

Max: Nothing springs to mind.

Ben: Long life to Touch The Night, We Need To Do Something, PMMP and Max Brooth!